The principal goal of this work is to gain a better understanding of some aspects of the neural encoding of complex tones in responses of single fibers of the auditory nerve. The primary phenomeon being studied is "two-tone suppression", which refers to the ability of a tone of given frequency and intensity to diminish the response to another excitatory tone. The primary objectives are (a) to extend earlier work in this area to encompass more stimulus situations, particularly when both tones are excitatory, (b) to investigate suppression effects when a third tone is introduced and when the suppressor is a band of noise, (c) to study the relationship between suppression and the generation of distortion products in the cochlea, and (d) to meld these results into a unified model for predicting auditory nerve responses to complex tones. Specific hypotheses to be tested include (a) the possibility that suppression magnitude is in part determined by spatial relationships among traveling waves in the cochlea, (b) the possibility that suppression and auditory distortion share the same generating mechanism, (c) the possibility that the manner in which complex tones are resolved mechanically is independent of the locus of stimualtion in the cochlea, and (d) the concept that suppressive effects are primary determinants of interactions observed in neural coding of complex tones.